ASPPH FRIDAY LETTER - Faculty, students, and staff are paying particularly close attention to cancer and working to enhance interdisciplinary collaborations to fight the disease. Each of Pitt Public Health's seven departments employs its own critical lens for exploring how to prevent disease and promote population health.

ASPPH FRIDAY LETTER - Findings published in the journal Public Health Reports suggest that real-time information about stamp bags can be used to supplement current public health surveillance measures and could serve as an early warning of new illegal drugs of high lethality available at the local level. It is the first robust and detailed public health report of a stamp bag surveillance system.

“We think we now have tools to measure changes to tumors that have become resistant to therapy,” says HUGEN’s ADRIAN LEE, who identified a new genetic change in the estrogen receptor that hinders treatment of breast cancer in some patients, uncovering new clues for potential improved treatments for breast cancer patients.

CITY LAB - “Universities are key drivers of the knowledge economy. And I know firsthand that Pittsburgh has great ones. Could the city have turned around without these institutions?” There is no question that what sets Pittsburgh apart from our Rust Belt brothers and sisters is the fact so much investment has come out of our “eds and meds” [educational and medical institutions]."

NASDAQ SUNDAY BUSINESS - Pitt’s LifeX initiative, founded by HUGEN's DIETRICH STEPHAN, will fight large unmet health needs by translating research into new companies offering new solutions for patients. LifeX brings together a combination of resources that young companies need to grow to scale, lab space, co-working office, mentorship, legal and venture capital advice.

PITT MAGAZINE - Two of Pitt’s featured “change agents” are Pitt Public Health grads. SEUNG WOOK LEE (BIOS '79, '82) and HYUN KYUNG MOON (EPI '86) were pioneers and trailblazers in their fields whose careers were made possible by degrees from Pitt. “Everything I’ve done is possible because of Pitt,” says Moon. “It gave me the credentials to be in the room."

PITT WIRE - While learning English at Pitt, 25 Japanese students missed out on the annual Coming of Age Ceremony, a national holiday in Japan. The Asian Studies Center threw them a party. “So many people support me here in Pittsburgh,” said Nanami Moriyasu, a Yasuda student majoring in English literature. “This ceremony was satisfying.”

MEDICAL X-PRESS - "At least 18 percent of individuals with pancreatic cancer and a personal history of other HBOC- or LS-related cancers carry mutations in a pancreatic cancer susceptibility gene based on our data, suggesting that criteria for genetic testing in individuals with pancreatic cancer should include consideration of previous cancer history," concludes HUGEN's BETH DUDLEY and colleagues.

CNN - The American Heart Association released a scientific statement, published in Circulation, warning that breast cancer patients may be at an increased risk of cardiovascular diseases and could benefit from discussing those risks with their doctors. The statement is "long overdue," said EPI's LEWIS KULLER who also has studied cardiovascular disease and breast cancer.

PITT NEWS – Nearly 3,000 Pennsylvanians died of opioid overdoses in 2015, according to the Public Health Dynamic's Laboratory. But researchers like MICHAEL MALLON (BCHS '13), the project coordinator for the Graduate School of Public Health's Opioid Initiatives, are working to change that statistic. "Pennsylvania is one state that is being hit harder than others. the number of overdoses almost doubles every eight or nine years," Mallon said.

TRIB LIVE - Analyzing motor-vehicle-related hospital admissions, in-person license renewal laws and vision testing were found to dramatically reduce the number of motor vehicle accidents by drivers with dementia, according to BCHS' STEVEN ALBERT and YLL AGIMI (EPI '12) as published in Neurology.

Menstruation is a suppressed topic in our society, it is usually a subject whispered about in school hallways, complained about in the bathroom or completely ignored in the workplace. Tamara Whiting has set out to normalize it with SisterFriend Inc., dedicated specifically to menstrual advocacy and product distribution. "Pitt Public Health has been an outstanding partner to SisterFriend" says Whiting, and will host a SisterFriend author presenta...

MEDICAL LIFE SCIENCES NEWS - In two years, fentanyl went from nonexistent to found in more than 1 in 7 stamp bags. This new information "could be used to inform educational campaigns, allocate limited resources and devise prevention strategies," says KATHLEEN CREPPAGE (EPI '18) while EPI's ANTHONY FABIO added that the work "is an important step in developing multi-disciplinary tools to quickly identify current and future sources of new drugs tha...

THE FLORIDA TIMES-UNION - The United States is the only developed nation in the word in which life spans are declining, in large part due to the scourge of overdose deaths. The last time life expectancy declined for two straight years was 1962 and 1963 during a flu epidemic. The drug abuse trends didn’t start yesterday. Drug fatalities had been doubling every eight years from 1979 to 2015, reported Dean DONALD BURKE. The U.S. has 5 percent of th...

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Coming of Age Ceremony brings Japanese tradition, Pittsburgh community together

PITT WIRE - While learning English at Pitt, 25 Japanese students missed out on the annual Coming of Age Ceremony, a national holiday in Japan. The Asian Studies Center threw them a party. “So many people support me here in Pittsburgh,” said Nanami Moriyasu, a Yasuda student majoring in English lite... (02/07/2018)

PITT WIRE - When we consider the determinants of women’s cardiovascular health, we need to think beyond biology alone,” said epidemiologist Rebecca Thurston. She recently led a study that demonstrates how traumatic experiences in life are linked to later vascular health issues that place women at ri... (12/12/2017)

PITTWIRE - New research led by Pitt Public Health affiliates and published in the American Journal of Human Genetics reveals that an interplay of at least 49 genes contributes to earlobe attachment inheritance. “Sometimes the genetics of a fairly simple trait are actually quite complex,” said ... (12/06/2017)